


The Book Of Lamentations

by GlitchCritter



Series: persona non grata [5]
Category: Christian Bible, Christian Bible (Old Testament), Original Work
Genre: Gen, Set during the Siege of Jerusalem (597 BC), devour all you have created, the bible is dark man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:28:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26167924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitchCritter/pseuds/GlitchCritter
Summary: I will survive, even if the soldiers pluck out my eyes and crush my limbs with stones, because I am already a daughter of a damned people, and if my afterlife is certain to be one of suffering I will cling to flesh with rotting teeth until the LORD is forced to see to me personally, kill me with his own glorious hands.A mother watches the fall of everything, and makes a choice.
Series: persona non grata [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1837216
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	The Book Of Lamentations

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning (major spoilers!): 
> 
> ///////////////
> 
> infanticide, cannibalism
> 
> ///////////////

You ask me to defend myself. What more can be said? The cities to the east have already fallen. There are refugees coated in soot and offal who tell stories of soldiers who slowly rent sons limb from limb and cut holes into daughters so there were more places to penetrate. There’s no point in fear anymore, all the worst is inevitable. We are terrified.

That day, I sat in the corner as my husband spoke to the other leaders of the city in hoarse voices, already weak from lack of drink. The aqueducts had stopped flowing a few days before. I saw orphaned children warring over stagnant pools full of mosquito larvae from my window. Once, we were the pulsing heart of an empire. Every denizen tasted the lifeblood of divinity, for in this land of milk and honey we could bask in the grace of the LORD. 

We reek of sin, now. How else could we have fallen this low? Our LORD spits upon mercy. Just as he has made our enemies swallow brimstone for their deviance, their inversion, now we grow thin and desperate, diseased and feral. And the more our humanity is defiled, the crueler we become, devouring each other like wild dogs until our souls churn black with flies. We were never chosen. HE does not choose favorites. So now we are just another enemy, another group of heathens to torture long past when we have repented for the error of our ways. Repentance is never enough. 

As my husband spoke with the other men, discussing what was to be done, my daughter began to wail in the other room. Her shrill tones were growing fainter with each passing day, as my milk dried up and the cows and goats were slaughtered before we wasted more grain on them. My husband gave me a dark look, for I was not even supposed to be listening to men’s talk, and I rushed off to perform my natural duties. Lacking anything else, I had been collecting my sweat, and now I fed it to her in briny drops with my calloused fingertip. We were left with so little to give each other, so few ways to create kindness. I held her tightly and patted her back. She retched air, spattered with dust. And just a bit of blood. 

She was my sixth. After a decade of marriage, of my husband heaving himself atop me every night, after the midwife extracted three motionless lumps from between my legs and two more stopped breathing by their first week’s end, she emerged. Screaming determination, kicking all about, as if she knew how miserable life was and was determined to reach heaven through violence. I took one look at her writhing defiance and passed out. When I awoke, she was at my breast, sucking at my nipple so hard I thought she’d pull it clean off. 

How can I scream when all sound is lost? There is no more singing in the square. The people are sluggish and wide-eyed. The air lies stagnant, it does not call out to us in turbulent nights. I have only survived due to the wealth and power of my husband, my husband who plots over how little time we have left, my husband, who has never bothered to look me in the eye, my husband, whose face is sallow and hunted, my husband, with his wide wide mouth and once-prodigious paunch, who now despairs, for you cannot eat gold. And no one else is stupid enough to take his money for the scraps of wheat they have left. 

I didn’t need to hear my husband’s words. I am fluent in the language of harsh tones and brassy timbre, I could tell from his inflection everything necessary to preserve myself. I knew that we would not survive the month. 

My child kicked weakly as I set her down. Her eyes were glazed, detached. I was so tired of tending to her at a time when I could barely survive. I was so tired of imagining all the terrible ways she would suffer when this siege ends. I was so tired of the wanting, the waiting, the sacrifice of flesh and blood and time while my husband sat in the corner and plotted how he could let us all die with honor intact.

I refuse to die here. I have existed half alive for so long, only tasting the euphoria of substance in the corners of moments where no one bothers to notice me. I will survive, even if the soldiers pluck out my eyes and crush my limbs with stones, because I am already a daughter of a damned people, and if my afterlife is certain to be one of suffering I will cling to flesh with rotting teeth until the LORD is forced to see to me personally, kill me with his own glorious hands. 

My daughter, she who was supposed to be my everything, was so, so strong. But she was too young to survive. If she was lucky, she would simply fade into a wraith, shrivel before she could truly know what pain tastes like. Our LORD does not want us to be lucky. He wants us to bleed.

So that night, as fires raged in the fields around us and soldiers prepared to pile our bodies into mangled heaps, I killed my daughter. It is traditional to want your children to be palimpsest, to let them continue a story that began long before you, that you will never see the end of. But I am prideful. I want to be like our LORD, to witness all that I have created be unmade, to be the beginning and the end tied in holy union. To take back all I have given.

I did not cook my daughter when I devoured her. I did not anoint her with spices and oils, she could never be made more perfect than she already was, that small piece of sacred fire. She tasted like all that was lost. She tasted like the red, wet heaven we dream of in darkness. She tasted like tears. 

When the morning came, my husband did not doubt me when I said she had starved in the night. He was too busy with the rest of us survivors to ask to see her grave, to bother with a proper funeral. And so I sat, fuller than I had been in months, years, until you came. I was stupid to think the women would not notice. I was stupid to think that the old ways were truly lost, that I would not be taken blindfolded before you, you with your thin, long hair and your knotted limbs, to stand trial for what I have done. 

My existence is my defense. I offer nothing else. You of the old ways know that all that can be given can justly be taken away. You of the true ways know that justice has long left this city. I petition you, let me live, for as long as I survive I carry my daughter with me, manifest immortality out of all that cannot last. Let me live, for all of you have dreamt, in some way, of what I have done. Let me live, because I was the only one strong enough to do it.


End file.
